


That Button-Up Shirt

by Idday



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Grief/Mourning, Hale Family Feels, Headcanon, The Hale Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 12:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2507972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idday/pseuds/Idday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura was wearing that white shirt the day of the fire, and Derek took it from the floor of their motel room while she was in the bathroom, after she’d changed into the cheap pajamas they’d had to buy at Walmart when everything, everything was gone. It smelled like smoke and like grief and a lot like Laura, but there, under it all, if he smelled and hoped hard enough, there was his father, still, and Derek balled up that shirt under his nose and breathed it in until he could smell nothing else.</p><p>He lost a lot, in those years, lost his innocence and his childhood and his whole fucking family, but he never lost that shirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Button-Up Shirt

**Author's Note:**

> So honestly, I don't even know, and this should not have happened because I have something else literally two seconds away from being done, but this just popped into my head last night, and I've learned to strike while the muse is hot (so to speak).
> 
> This is like a lot of rambling and mostly headcanon-y and kind of character study-y and I probably wouldn't have written it except I maybe couldn't have slept otherwise, so if someone else reads/likes this, it's just a bonus.
> 
> Pretty much based entirely off canon, so no additional warnings I can think of, except grief and sadness a la Derek Hale, so if I need to tag anything else, let me know.
> 
> Don't own Teen Wolf, la la la, no money, la la la.
> 
> Stiles is like the literal only other real person in this? So if you squint a lot I guess you could see Stereky stuff but if that's not your jam I don't want to scare you off because even though I usually write that, this is wayyyyy not it. So. Just so you know.
> 
> As always, unbeta-ed, all mistakes (and there def may be some, I wrote this in like half an hour) are totally my bad.
> 
> Please enjoy, read, and respond!

Laura used to take one of their dad’s shirts, sometimes—just a simple, white button-up, one he’d never miss. She liked to tie it up over a plaid skirt, went through a phase her senior year, and Derek had always teased her about it, called her ‘Britney,’ but he saw the way all the boys looked at her in it, and he understood. Wanted someone to look at him that way, sometimes, but he was still in his awkward phase, all spiky hair and too-big ears and bunny teeth, and kids only looked to tease.

The first time somebody looked at him like all those boys looked at Laura, it ruined his life.

Laura was wearing that white shirt the day of the fire, and Derek took it from the floor of their motel room while she was in the bathroom, after she’d changed into the cheap pajamas they’d had to buy at Walmart when everything, everything was gone. It smelled like smoke and like grief and a lot like Laura, but there, under it all, if he smelled and hoped hard enough, there was his father, still, and Derek balled up that shirt under his nose and breathed it in until he could smell nothing else, laying on a hard mattress under a stained comforter in a strange room, and hated himself and cried and cried and cried.

He kept that shirt, wrinkled and tear-stained and still stinking of smoke, kept it with him as they wandered across the country that summer, kept it with him when Laura settled on a New York school and used the first of the insurance money to pay the first month of rent, kept it hidden away in the back of his closet, where he’d never lose it, where he could sneak it out in the dead of night and inhale it like there was still something there to smell, kept it with him as he moved into his dorm room and then back in with Laura and then, finally, as he moved back to Beacon Hills.

He lost a lot, in those years, lost his innocence and his childhood and his whole fucking family, but he never lost that shirt.

It’s still hanging in the back of his closet somewhere, never washed, hardly touched, and certainly not smelling of his father’s aftershave anymore, not after all this time, but it’s still there, and Derek would never admit under torture (he knows, he’s been there) that it’s his single most prized possession.

He was always a bit of a mama’s boy, maybe—all the kids were, that special Alpha-Beta bond can never be replicated—but it was his dad, stereotypical as it seems, that taught him how to be a man, who taught him how to play basketball and how to make pancakes and how to tie a tie, his dad who taught him what was under the hood of a car and which was poison ivy and to respect everybody, man and woman, human and wolf.

It’s his dad whom Derek misses hot fierce _burning_ when he smells the coffee brewing first thing in the morning and when he hears a horrible pun and every time he goes for a run.

It’s his dad whom he cries for every time he moves too many clothes in his closet and sees that white shirt hanging there, wrinkled and greying and limp and all he has left of someone he had idolized.

Stiles comes over, wheedles and pushes and bullies and _talks_ his way into letting Derek let him go through his wardrobe, see what he needs to become a “real person,” and Derek doesn’t mind, not really, because he does need some new clothes, probably, and he’s not much of a shopper, himself, and he forgets for just one sickening moment what he’s hidden away from prying eyes, what he’s selfishly guarding, and he only remembers once Stiles runs across it, lifts the hanger with just one finger, and says, “Ew.”

And it is gross, maybe, this shirt that hasn’t been worn or washed in a decade, that’s musty and crumpled and probably covered in Derek’s own tears, but it’s just _too much,_ and Derek pulls the hanger from Stiles, clutches the shirt to his chest, and says, “Get out,” very coldly, and when Stiles opens his mouth to protest, Derek _roars_ like he hasn’t in years, maybe never, certainly not to Stiles, until he can hear the mugs in the kitchen cupboards rattle, and Stiles goes all wide-eyed and wounded looking and then leaves.

Derek feels too sick and panicky to feel bad. He shakes the hanger out of the shirt, burrows under his covers, and holds the shirt under his nose, like he’s sixteen again, back in that motel room, and misses his father, his _dad,_ until the tears come and he doesn’t even try to stop them.

He spends all night in bed, maybe—he drifts, and time passes, and he’s not sure how many hours he’s there, but by the time Stiles reappears at his bedroom door, it’s light _again,_ so it’s probably been all night. Stiles looks soft and a little sad and a lot apologetic, and he just says, “I don’t know exactly… but I have this. This half empty bottle of my mom’s old perfume, I keep it in the bottom drawer of my dresser behind all my sweatpants, and I don’t know if even my dad knows, but… But I get it, and if this is anything like that, like I think it maybe is, I just… I just didn’t know, before, but I’m really sorry.”

And then he turns and goes, and Derek closes his eyes and sleeps.

When he wakes up, he’s still clutching the shirt, and Derek stares at it for a long time.

Then he stands in front of his full length mirror—the one Derek only allowed under protest, and at Stiles’ insistence—and he, for the first time, tries the shirt on.

It had always been big on Laura, probably would have been big on Derek, at the time, but he’s grown a lot since then, and it fits remarkably well, now. It’s a little too long in the sleeves, a little too tight across the chest, but it’s a relief somehow, that he can fit into it—that he’s similar to his father, in this way, and also that he’ll never have to downsize his father in his memories, that he wasn’t shorter or weaker than Derek remembers.

Derek wraps his arms around himself, and then takes a deep breath and slips out of the shirt and folds it very carefully, and sets in on the bed while he goes to find a cardboard box.

He doesn’t have much, from his family, but over the years, he’s found enough.

Into the box goes the shirt, gently smoothed.

Into the box goes Laura’s well-loved old Teddy Bear, found inexplicably in the trunk of her car, the one she slept with into adulthood, the one she cried herself sick over a month after the fire when one of its eyes fell off somewhere in Oklahoma, never to be seen again.

Into the box goes a project about her family tree, complete with hand drawn pictures of each family member, that Cora had turned into her fourth grade teacher a week before the fire, the one the same teacher had returned to Laura later, a bright, cheery ‘A’ penned in the top corner, saying, “I thought you’d like to have it.”

Into the box goes a quilt Derek’s grandmother had sewn out of the baby clothes of her children, Derek’s mother included, which had been on display at the local museum and which Laura had demanded back the day after the fire, the one that had traveled with them to New York and back.

Into the box goes Derek’s parent’s marriage certificate, Laura’s birth certificate—all the official documents the bank had kept.

Into the box goes the handwritten letter addressed to him that he and Laura had found when they’d gone to access their parent’s will, tucked in amongst all the other paperwork. His mother had written them each one, though neither he or Laura had known when, and now Derek doesn’t know where Laura’s is, if she had read it, what it had said, but his and Cora’s are both here, unopened. Derek had never had the heart (the courage) to read his.

Maybe he’ll show Cora this box, someday. Maybe he’ll give her her own letter and show her the quilt and let her hug the Teddy Bear like Laura let him do, when he was young, on his bad days. Maybe he’ll let her wear the shirt.

Maybe, someday, he’ll read his own letter.

For now, Derek closes the box, and puts in on a shelf in his closet.

For now, Derek goes and lives his life.

He lives it like his father taught him.

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this and cried a lot and everything is just fine. I also have some very specific notions on when Derek finally reads that letter, maybe, though I have no clue what's in it.
> 
> Feel free to drop me a line if you have feelings, I always love feedback!
> 
> Thanks again for reading!
> 
> More Derek feels (with a healthy serving of Sterek) on my [tumblr!](http://iddayidnight.tumblr.com/)


End file.
